Sole U.S. Uranium Enricher to Pursue Bankruptcy

The only do­mest­ic U.S. urani­um-en­rich­ment com­pany on Monday said it plans to seek bank­ruptcy with­in months, the New York Times re­ports.

The com­pany, USEC, still plans by 2017 to wrap up de­vel­op­ment of a new-gen­er­a­tion en­rich­ment cent­ri­fuge. However, its latest fin­an­cial move could com­plic­ate ef­forts to se­cure fed­er­al fund­ing for the Amer­ic­an Cent­ri­fuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio, bey­ond $257 mil­lion in En­ergy De­part­ment grants awar­ded since 2011, ac­cord­ing to the news­pa­per.

Con­trol of the cent­ri­fuge pro­ject might go to the En­ergy De­part­ment as a res­ult of the bank­ruptcy. It is un­clear, though, if Wash­ing­ton would push the en­rich­ment ini­ti­at­ive for­ward to com­ple­tion, the Times re­por­ted. The ef­fort is already 12 years be­hind sched­ule, and its pro­jec­ted $6.5 bil­lion ex­pense is nearly four times great­er than its ori­gin­al $1.7 bil­lion cost es­tim­ate.

Still, the United States might con­tin­ue ad­van­cing the ef­fort to help en­sure a se­cure sup­ply of tri­ti­um, a hy­dro­gen iso­tope crit­ic­al for boost­ing the ex­plos­ive power of U.S. nuc­le­ar weapons. The ma­ter­i­al de­cays at a reg­u­lar rate, mean­ing that more must be con­tinu­ally har­ves­ted from fuel rods in Ten­ness­ee Val­ley Au­thor­ity power re­act­ors if war­heads are to be main­tained.

The Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion and some U.S. law­makers have said that un­der in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments, the United States can use only urani­um re­fined with its own tech­no­logy as a source of tri­ti­um. Sev­er­al ana­lysts have con­tested that view, though, ar­guing that the United States could ex­tract tri­ti­um from urani­um en­riched with­in its bor­ders us­ing European-ori­gin equip­ment.

This art­icle was pub­lished in Glob­al Se­cur­ity News­wire, which is pro­duced in­de­pend­ently by Na­tion­al Journ­al Group un­der con­tract with the Nuc­le­ar Threat Ini­ti­at­ive. NTI is a non­profit, non­par­tis­an group work­ing to re­duce glob­al threats from nuc­le­ar, bio­lo­gic­al, and chem­ic­al weapons.

"Chuck Rosenberg, the acting head of the Drug Enforcement Agency who has found himself and his agency at odds with the Trump administration in recent months, told staff members Tuesday that he is planning to step down from his post." The Obama administration holdover will step down on October 1.

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HAD BEGUN TO PUBLICLY CRITICIZE TRUMP

Sen. Corker to Retire

1 hours ago

THE DETAILS

Another Republican member of Congress is showing himself out the door. After much thought, consideration and family discussion over the past year, Elizabeth and I have decided that I will leave the United States Senate when my term expires at the end of 2018,” said Sen. Bob Corker in a statement. The Tennessean has served since 2006.

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NOT ILLEGAL, BUT MUST BE FORWARDED TO WORK ACCOUNTS

At Least 6 WH Advisors Used Private Email Accounts

1 hours ago

THE LATEST

Jared Kushner, Stephen Bannon, Reince Priebus, Gary Cohn, Stephen Miller, and Ivanka Trump sent or received some emails on personal accounts that related to White House business. "Officials are supposed to use government emails for their official duties so their conversations are available to the public and those conducting oversight. But it is not illegal for White House officials to use private email accounts as long as they forward work-related messages to their work accounts so they can be preserved."

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SAYS CONTACTS WERE “BENIGN”

Stone Releases Correspondence with Guccifer 2.0

2 hours ago

THE LATEST

"Roger Stone, a longtime friend and adviser to Donald Trump, released correspondence Tuesday" with the online hacker known as Guccifer 2.0 , which "U.S. intelligence agencies said was used by Russian government-linked entities to distribute embarrassing information about Democrats during the 2016 election. The disclosures came in a 47-page opening statement made available to reporters in advance of Mr. Stone’s Tuesday appearance in front of the House Intelligence Committee." Stone called his contacts with Guccifer "limited" and "benign."

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PRIEBUS, SPICER, HICKS, MCGAHAN

Mueller Could Start Interviewing White House Figures This Week

2 hours ago

THE LATEST

"Special counsel investigators could start interviewing current and former White House staff as soon as later this week regarding the Russian probe, two sources familiar with the matter tell CNN. One source cautioned it is still being worked out with Robert Mueller's office and said it might be delayed until next week." Among those who could have a sit-down with the special prosecutor: former chief of staff Reince Priebus, former press secretary Sean Spicer, communications director Hope Hicks, White House counsel Don McGahn, communications adviser Josh Raffel and associate counsel James Burnham.